Let’s Eat Grandma
Two Ribbons
TRANSGRESSIVE
There was never any guarantee that Let’s Eat Grandma would come back. The duo, comprised of lifelong friends Jenny Hollingworth and Rosa Walton, has been rocked by the sort of upheaval that could have easily shattered their friendship and creative partnership. Hollingworth’s boyfriend, Billy Clayton, died from a rare form of bone cancer at the age of 22 in 2019. Let’s Eat Grandma cancelled their planned U.S. tour dates for the year. And as Hollingworth and Walton worked through the turbulence, they found themselves distant and tense. It was a period unlike anything they’d ever weathered, and they started writing songs on their own—something they’d never done with past albums.
The resulting third album, Two Ribbons, confronts that tension directly. It’s a strikingly candid record; on the surface many of these songs merely scan as fizzy, feel-good pop, but the reality is thornier; nearly every song is navigating a precarious emotional minefield of some type. The propulsive “Insect Loop” finds two friends crippled by a communication breakdown, at odds with each other and unsure how to reconcile. Similarly, the joyful synths of “Happy New Year” bely its narrative about a friendship on the rocks. “Hall of Mirrors” finds Walton grappling with her sexuality, but places its emphasis on the catharsis of her journey.
Two Ribbons carries a palpable maturity and heft, a natural progression from the duo’s last two albums—but a continuously surprising one, too. It would’ve been interesting to hear music that mirrored the storminess the duo were experiencing in mood and construction. But what Two Ribbons offers might be more interesting: a radiant, idyllic disco-pop landscape intermittently punctured by real-life trauma and growing pains.
